Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 American science fiction action film, the second installment of the Terminator franchise and the sequel to The Terminator (1984). Directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron and William Wisher, Jr., it stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, and Edward Furlong. Terminator 2 follows Sarah Connor (Hamilton) and her ten-year-old son John (Furlong) as they are pursued by a new, more advanced Terminator, the liquid metal, shapeshifting T-1000 (Patrick), sent back in time to 1995 to kill John and prevent him from becoming the leader of the human Resistance against the machines. An older, less advanced Terminator (Schwarzenegger) is also sent back in time to protect John. After a troubled pre-production characterized by legal disputes, Mario Kassar of Carolco Pictures emerged with the franchise's property rights in early 1990. This paved the way for the completion of the screenplay by the Cameron-led production team, and the October 1990 start of a shorter-than-originally-planned 186-day filming schedule. The production of Terminator 2 required an unprecedented budget of more than $94 million (1991 dollars), much of which was spent on filming and special effects. The film was released on July 3, 1991, in time for the U.S. Fourth of July weekend. Terminator 2, a box office and critical success, influenced popular culture and especially movies in the genres of action and science fiction. The film's visual effects saw many breakthroughs in computer-generated imagery, including the first use of natural human motion for a computer-generated character and the first partially computer-generated main character. It received many accolades, including four Academy Awards for makeup, sound mixing, sound editing, and visual effects. Plot In 1995, John Connor is ten years old and living in Los Angeles with foster parents. His mother Sarah Connor had been preparing him throughout his childhood for his future role as the leader of the human resistance against Skynet, but was arrested after attempting to bomb a computer factory and remanded to a mental hospital under the supervision of Dr. Silberman. Skynet sends a new Terminator, a T-1000, back in time to kill John. A prototype which is more advanced than the Terminator sent to kill Sarah in 1984, the T-1000 is composed of a "mimetic poly-alloy" that allows it to take the shape and appearance of anything it touches. The T-1000 arrives naked under a freeway, where he kills a policeman and steals his clothes. Though it cannot mimic complex machines such as guns or bombs, it can shape parts of itself into knives and stabbing weapons and can mimic the voice and appearance of humans. Meanwhile, the future John Connor has sent back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator to protect his younger self. The Terminator arrives naked as well, demands clothes from a biker, who refuses, causing a bar fight. He takes the man's motorcycle and starts his search for John. The Terminator and the T-1000 converge on John in a shopping mall, and a chase ensues in which John and the Terminator escape by motorcycle. Fearing that the T-1000 will kill Sarah in order to get to him, John orders the Terminator to help free her. They encounter Sarah escaping the hospital after severely injuring Dr. Silberman's staff and himself. Then the three escape the T-1000. The Terminator informs John and Sarah about Skynet, the artificial intelligence that will initiate a nuclear war on "Judgment Day" and go on to create the machines that will hunt the remnants of humanity.1 Sarah learns that the man most directly responsible for Skynet's creation is Miles Dyson, a Cyberdyne Systems engineer working on a revolutionary new microprocessor that will form the basis for Skynet. Sarah gathers weapons from an old friend and plans to flee with John to Mexico, but after having a horrific nightmare of a nuclear explosion she awakens and sets out to kill Miles Dyson to prevent "Judgment Day" from occurring. She wounds him at his home but finds herself unable to kill him in front of his family. She knows that killing him will prevent the war, but will only make things worse. John and the Terminator arrive and inform Miles of the consequences of his work and learn that much of his research has been reverse engineered from the CPU and the right arm of the previous Terminator. Convincing him that these items and his designs must be destroyed, they break into the Cyberdyne building and retrieve the CPU and the arm. The police arrive and Miles is shot, but stays behind to trigger a detonator that destroys his lab. The Terminator encounters a SWAT team, wounds them, and steals one of their vans. The T-1000 takes over a helicopter and pursues them. The Terminator crashes the van on the freeway, causing the helicopter to crash into it too, but Sarah gets injured in the process. In a climactic battle in a steel mill, the T-1000 is thrown into a vat of molten steel, where it is destroyed. John throws the components of the original Terminator into the vat as well. The Terminator then explains that it must be sacrificed itself so that its technology cannot be used to create Skynet, and asks Sarah to lower it into the steel. John begs for the Terminator to stay, but he says good-bye to John and Sarah, and is lowered into the vat. Cast *Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator / T-800 *Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor *Robert Patrick as the T-1000 *Edward Furlong as John Connor *Earl Boen as Dr. Peter Silberman *Joe Morton as Miles Bennett Dyson External links * Category:Films Category:1991 release Category:The Terminator series Category:Arnold Schwarzenegger films Category:Linda Hamilton films